Discordia is based on Scoop software that has been modified by the Discordia working group in keeping with extensive discussions about how communication and exchanging ideas could work and how software development
can be a creative and integral part of that process.

What are the different sections for?

The Discordia sections basically reflect possible different modes or
styles of communication and discussion. The sections "Editors' Picks"
and "Special Guest Host's Corner" under the heading "Nepotism" are for
invited content: the editors and specially invited guest hosts choose
and post stories here without going through the moderation process,
but which all users are naturally invited to comment on. Stories and
announcements to all the other sections under the heading "Democracy"
are first listed as "pending", and other users then vote for them to
appear on the front page or under the relevant section (or not at all,
as the case may be). This division is intended to make "curatorial"
decisions more transparent.

Since answers, usually in the form of a definitive statement to appear
authoritative, are so often privileged, what happens when a greater
value is attributed to questions? If meaningful and interesting
questions are able to open up new avenues of exploration, inviting a
greater diversity of responses than statements that provoke only
specific reactions, could the development of an "art of questioning"
lead to a more open discourse culture? In order to explore the
possibilities of different styles of communication, the Question
Corner only permits postings in the form of a question.

-E.A. Dobbs

One of the greatest strengths of a mailing list is that it draws
like-minded people with similar interests together. For this reason, a
relevant mailing list can be important for reaching potential
audiences, participants, readers, etc. with announcements of events,
publications, projects. Unfortunately, the drawback is that too many
announcements may start to choke communication on the list, hampering
exchange so that the effect is counterproductive. E.A. Dobbs,
Discordia's own Discordarchivist, is an Essay and Announcement Databased
intended to provide a forum for announcements, publication releases and self-promotion, in order take the need to make announcements seriously, but
without drowning out all other exchanges at the same time.

-Review-A-Rama

As the name suggests, this section focuses on "reviews" - opinions,
discussions, descriptions of books, films, events, exhibitions, web
sites ... Any kind of presented work that incites opinions,
discussions, further developments.

-Secret Room Upstairs

Creative, open-ended, experimental exchange necessarily involves input
that can be playful, subversive, irritating, puzzling. This is another
need, however, that has sometimes proved counterproductive in the
linear structure of mailing lists by blocking all other communication.
The Secret Room Upstairs is Discordia's playground, where the
conventional rules of netiquette do not apply. If you want to play,
all you have to do is find it.

-Filter-It-Yourself

Even the most straightforward statement of information can take on a
different meaning, if it is filtered through a different perspective.
Economic topics, for example, can reveal hidden pitfalls if filtered
through a gender-sensitive perspective, philosophical ideas may be
given a surprising twist when filtered through translations into
different languages, political agendas often change color when
filtered through a different ideology. In this section, users are
invited to take stories and comments from other areas of Discordia or
to link to articles found elsewhere, and run these through the filter
of their choice (e.g. feminist critique, Marxism, anti-globalism,
translations ...) to reveal unstated or unconscious presuppositions
and potential stumbling blocks that are not immediately obvious within
the original framework.

-Whatever

As it is in the nature of creative and critical thinking to cross
categories and conjoin disparate ideas, this section is open to
discussion that does not fit comfortably in one of the other sections.

-Discordia Home Improvements

The meta-section for discussing Discordia: the idea, the concept, the
implementation, the possibilities ...

Comments and suggestions on how well Discordia works now and what could be improved
are welcome here, as well as shared reflections on how structures influence
communication and vice versa. What do you find confusing about Discordia, and which
are the features you have always dreamed of, but never found anywhere else? Which
role could this kind of platform play in which contexts?

Many different sections have been proposed in the course of extensive
discussions about how to most effectively structure communication
without being too rigid. These seemed to be the best ones to start
with, but they could be changed, if it appears through the use of
Discordia that more, less or different sections might be more helpful.

If the aim of Discordia is to interweave ideas, isn't it a
contradiction to divide postings into different sections?

The sections are intended to organize rather than divide postings.
They are not meant to be rigid divisions for separating ideas, but
rather suggestions for different ways of dealing with them. The
Discordia development group has been experimenting with possibilities
for creating links among disparate postings, so users are invited to
join in this experiment by watching for potential connections and
trying out new features as they may appear on the site. Users are also
encouraged to submit new stories that tie ideas from posted stories
together.